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Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:
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Our bodies are crackling with energy, and our cells make use of that energy using methods honed over billions of years of evolution.
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However, a new study suggests that cells could possibly be leveraging a surprising source of energy known as flexoelectricity, which transforms mechanical deformation into minuscule electrical signals.
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The researchers suggest that the churning, non-equilibrium environment of membranes surrounding cells could be enough energy to support biological functions such as ion transport.
Life requires energy, so it makes sense that the cells that make up our bodies have become extremely adept at utilizing any energy source on hand over billions of years of evolution. Of course, scientists have long known about the process of cellular respiration which in turn produces adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, a form of energy, but a new study claims that there’s still more to learn about how our cells utilize energy embedded in its surrounding environment.
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Published in the journal PNAS Nexus, researchers from University of Houston and Rutgers University applied the concept of “flexoelectricity” to living cells to investigate if this phenomenon, which transforms mechanical deformation into electrical signals, could be a significant source of energy. What they found is that the fluctuations in membranes surrounding cells produced roughly 90 millivolts—enough to fire a neuron.
“Living cells constantly experience nanoscale membrane fluctuations due to molecular motion and activity. Can these fluctuations produce electricity?,” the authors write. “We show that these active fluctuations, when coupled with the universal electromechanical property of flexoelectricity, can generate transmembrane voltages and even drive ion transport.”
This new research is led by University of Houston’s Pradeep Sharma, who for decades has explored the concept of flexoelectricity in more artificial platforms including soft robotics, medical devices, and other self-powered autonomous sensors. At the heart of these technologies is the concept of piezoelectricity, a phenomenon where certain materials generate electric charge when mechanically stressed. The vibration of these materials effectively create an alternating current, and these materials can be found in a variety of technologies, including everything from smartphones to ultrasonic sensors.
“Flexoelectricity, at the nanoscale, allows you to coax ordinary material to behave like a piezoelectric one,” Sharma said in an interview back in 2009. “Perhaps more importantly, this phenomenon exists in materials that are already piezoelectric. You can make the effect even larger.”
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While this phenomenon is well-explored at macro scales, the authors argue that the properties of piezoelectricity at the cellular level are less well-known. The researchers realized that the environment of cellular membranes are potentially ideal environments for flexoelectricity, and that’s because while energy created in a system in equilibrium would essentially cancel out, membranes are driven out of equilibrium by protein dynamics and ATP hydrolysis, among other processes. According to the authors, this discovery provides a new platform for the interaction between mechanical work and bioelectricity, which could even have ramifications for bio-inspired computational platforms such as neuromorphic computing.
“Investigating electromechanical dynamics in neuron networks may bridge molecular flexoelectricity and complex information processing, with implications for both understanding brain function and discovering bio-inspired computational materials,” the authors write.
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